Category Archive: Sensationalist Journalism

Junk Science: The Least Important Meal of the Day

A new report from the alarmist Environmental Working Group (EWG) warns your breakfast may be poisoning you.
The scapegoat of choice is one that has faced backlash from environmentalists on both sides of the Atlantic—glyphosate, a chemical routinely used in herbicides for 40 years.
Possibly out of concern for their own granola-heavy diets, the EWG’s so-called scientists report they analyzed oat cereals, oatmeal, granola and snack bars, finding “higher glyphosate levels than what the group's scientists believe to be ‘protective of children's health’".
While that’s what the best and brightest at the EWG believe, here’s what actual experts know.
In December 2017, an Environmental...

Stopping Pollution Means Collecting Garbage in the First Place.

The pictures and videos showing wave after wave of garbage piling up on Montesinos Beach in Dominican Republic are pretty horrifying. The New York Times reports that 60 tons of garbage had been collected from the site in just one week, with plenty more still piling high against palm trees and covering tide pools.
Clearly, many of these stories point out, the pollution is a symptom of our love affair with single-use plastic. Right? Wrong.
As CNN, The New York Times, and Time note in the final sentences of their coverage, the garbage isn’t ocean plastic washed ashore. It’s coming from Dominican...

Sorry LA Times, Proposition 65 is Definitely Overkill

Earlier this week, the Los Angeles Times ran an opinion article called "Cancer warnings for coffee may be overkill, but Proposition 65 is not."
We beg to differ.
The authors argue that in spite of Proposition 65 extracting hundreds of millions of dollars from businesses and requiring warnings on products that definitely won't cause cancer (which lead the public to ignore warnings when they do matter), the law is totally worth it because it convinces companies to reformulate their products without toxic chemicals.
The authors attribute Kaiser Permanente’s decision to stop using IV equipment containing the chemical DEHP to Proposition 65. However, the healthcare provider’s decision came more than twenty years after...

Does ibuprofen make you infertile?

Millions of Americans utilize ibuprofen (the active ingredient in Motrin and Advil) to relieve pain from headaches, muscle aches, arthritis, and reduce fevers. But the question of its effect on male fertility circulated in the media early this year after a study found that men taking the maximum recommended dose of ibuprofen developed a hormonal imbalance. With evidence demonstrating that overall sperm counts are on the decline in Western countries (although reported levels are still above normal), male infertility is having its time in the spotlight, and no potential cause is off limits.
So what about ibuprofen?
For this study, only 14...

Do Cellphones Cause Cancer?

Earlier this month, the National Toxicology Program (NTP) released preliminary data from two long-term studies on cellphones and cancer.
The studies found that after exposing rodents to the highest levels of radiofrequency radiation (the same kind emitted by cellphones), some male rats – but no females, and no mice of either sex – developed tumors in the nervous tissue around the heart. Interestingly, rats with the highest exposure also tended to live longer.
So what do the results mean? Do cell phones make us live longer? Or do they cause cancer?
The research looked at more than 3,000 rats and mice exposed to...

Fertility Problems? Don’t Blame Your Yoga Mat.

A recent study from the from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was the first to find an association between a group of chemicals called organophosphate flame retardants (PFRs) and the number of successful fertilizations, implantations, pregnancies, and live births among women receiving in vitro fertilization.
Most of us (we’re talking 90 to 100 percent) regularly encounter PFRs because they’re used to prevent fires in tech gadgets and furniture. PFRs were developed to replace polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), an earlier type of flame retardant that manufacturers began phasing out in the early 2000s after studies indicated they may be having an...

How Do Solar Eclipse Glasses Work? Chemistry.

In just a few hours, Americans will witness the first total solar eclipse to touch coast-to-coast in almost 100 years.
If reactions to past galactic news are any indication, for a brief few days, interest in science and technology will spike. After all, how often does the average person find themselves wondering how NASA calculates the path of an eclipse years in advance, or what makes solar eclipse sunglasses so darn special? (Spoiler: many lenses reduce the intensity of visible light and UV rays using black polymer, a flexible resin infused with carbon particles. Score 1 for chemistry.)
But it shouldn’t take a once-in-a-century event...

Back-to-School Shopping? Here’s How You Can Keep Your Kids Healthy And Safe.

Parents can hardly search for the best back-to-school deals without being bombarded by news reports and blog posts about “highly toxic chemicals” in school supplies. It doesn’t get much better at the store either, with many brands marketing their products as free from harmful chemicals. That means the other backpacks, markers and lunchboxes are full them, right?
Wrong.
We’re going to clue you in on a secret: these claims don’t mean much, because the products were safe to begin with.
Consider one scare tactic by the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, which makes waves every year telling concerned parents to avoid backpacks, binders, notebooks and art supplies...

Grab Some Coffee and Perk Up to Sensationalized Science

One day it seems that coffee will kill you, while the next it's hailed as the key to a long life. So what gives?
In an article published in RealClearScience, our chief science officer, Dr. Joseph Perrone, explains why poor scientific methodology accepted by groups like the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) makes it incredibly difficult for the average reader to pick good science from pseudoscience.
Interestingly enough, the latest back-and-forth around coffee also comes from IARC. Four of the coffee study’s authors, including lead researcher Dr. Marc Gunter, are current IARC scientists.
Just like claims that someone’s lifelong medical history can be...

Is Coffee the Fountain Of Youth You’ve Been Looking For?

A “landmark” study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine discovered the fountain of youth tastes a lot like freshly brewed coffee.
After examining the diets of more than 500,000 Europeans over roughly 16 years, researchers found that increased coffee consumption was associated with a reduced risk of death from all causes. (Cue the flood of headlines claiming “Coffee drinking could lead to longer life.”)
Not so fast, sensationalist journalism.
Just like claims that someone’s lifelong medical history can be sidestepped with an extra morning brew, this evaluation should be taken with a grain of salt – or perhaps in this case, sugar.
Although researchers followed hundreds of...